Annnnnd… we’re back. Winter, work, COVID and all that stuff got in the way, but greydogtales is powering up for 2022. Weird literature, strange trivia, and of course, lurchers. So today let’s whet appetites, just for fun, with a new short tale of Mamma Lucy, the old hoodoo woman who travels through 1920s America, ‘adjusting’ things as she goes…
ON THE SEVENTH DAY, SHE RESTED
Willie Brown stole a hog.
‘Cepting he didn’t steal it – he bought it fair from Nate Rivens, when Nate had gone too far down the jug one night. But Nate, as he stuck his head under the pump the following morning, was minded that Willie had been so plumb happy at the deal, he’d left behind the bill of sale. Which got Nate thinking. Paper burned easy; Willie was only one of them colored boys, and surely Nate had the right of it through being what he was – an honest, winsome Rivens, and white as curds, no less? So he bothered his neighbors, he yelled some, and he made out that Willie Brown had gone and took the beast, never a dime in return.
Ole Casper Rivens, Nate’s uncle, had ridden with the judge, days past, and the local constable was no stranger to Ole Casper’s pockets, so it seemed set to be a clear day for the Rivens. They hauled Willie to the courtroom, the judge set a heavy fine for his thieving – it was that or a whipping and the jail at Gainesville – and they took the hog, who didn’t know master from mud-bath.
And that would have been the way of it, had an old conjure-woman not turned up in town the day after the trial. Barefoot and gangly in her faded print dress, she came with a look to her that made hats tip, even those of a few white folk. Some said she was called Mamma Lucy, and that she’d walked heavy through Barrow County once; others kept names to themselves. Whichever way, Willie Brown’s mother knew her face, and had a need.
“Y’all know my boy been wronged, Mamma.”
“That’s a steel-hard truth,” said the conjure-woman, her milk-and-honey eye staring way off from the other. “But hold them tears, girl. We’ll see this through… iffen the Good Lord wills.”
So Willie’s mother bit her cheek, wept a mite more, and went home. Around noon the same day, Mamma Lucy set herself on the crooked hickory bench by Casper Riven’s seed-store. Abe Johnson saw her clear.
“She hunkers down with roots an’ such from that there carpet-bag o’ hers,” he told the drug-store moochers. “And she spreads ‘em out in her lap, like she’s a-waitin’. Don’t use no words, though, not as I heared. Then she jess puts ‘em away, and up she goes, bound for the creek.”
In the night, rats got into the store’s cellar and made play with some of Casper Rivens’s best seed. Ole Casper woke to this bad news, and a bellyache besides, one which Doc Meredith’s powders wouldn’t shift. As for the rats, their bellies ached fit to burst too, but there weren’t a body listening to hear their side of the matter.
The noon which followed, Mamma Lucy was spotted again, squatting in the shade of a live oak, and maybe she had a green felt bag ‘tween her fingers, maybe she didn’t. The oak wasn’t that tall nor wide, but it happened to stand tidy on the edge of Casper Riven’s yard. Again, she didn’t stay long.
That night, Casper’s wife Mercy cut herself whilst peeling taters (for the help had sickened). Cut herself bad, and Doc Meredith had some sewing up to do. With all the fuss and feathers in the house, Casper’s bellyache got worse.
By now, folks all allowed that the conjure-woman was sure seen often near Casper Rivens or what he owned – and he owned plenty. Everywhere he stepped, there – but not any too close – was a dark, gangly figure. Yet she never tried to jaw with him, nor did anything that might raise a holler. Ole Casper himself wouldn’t stoop to speak to her sort; the constable passed by her a few times, all sweat and nerves, but the old colored woman had coin, talked polite, and always moved on if she was told direct.
Casper’s lumbago took a turn for the worse around that time, and his belly weren’t no better.
On the sixth day, a hand told Casper that Mamma Lucy had been seen chawing cane outside the bank where the Rivenses did their business. When the telegraph clattered a few hours later, turned out that he had lost ninety cents in the dollar on an oil claim that proved dry, sudden, out Aintry way…
Ole Casper was done with hogs. Grim as a Hessian’s horse, he strode to his nephew’s shack, and a mighty ruckus was heard. A half hour after, Nate, scrubbed and tight-collared, went calling on the judge. Seems that a bill of sale for the hog had ‘slipped clean down between two boards,’ but now was found. Right sorry was Nate, so he said, and the judge, though hardly sorry, did grumbling justice. Willie Brown got his name and his hog back by sundown.
Outside the courthouse, Doc Meredith and the conjure woman watched a thin colored boy leading away his rightful property. It weren’t no more than his due, and surely less than should have been, but in those times, matters could have been much worse.
“That’s some witchin’ you done there, Mamma,” said the doctor, soft-like. He didn’t look so bothered, though, for the Rivens always put him in mind of temples and ‘dens of thieves’.
“Ain’t no witch.” She gave him her big, horse-teeth smile. “And who says I laid a single trick all week? What folks choose t’believe, well, that’s in other hands.”
Mamma Lucy was an ornery hoodoo woman when the need arose, but she was also in the head-business. And she knew her trade, as Ole Casper Givens could attest…
Next up this week, a spotlight on Michael Kelly’s excellent independent press Undertow.
In the meantime, do have a look at my recent second collection, Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021), which is less Edwardian but more wide-ranging…
AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH AMAZON, AND THROUGH THE PUBLISHER, JOURNALSTONE
Amazon US: Where All is Night, and Starless
Amazon UK: Where All is Night, and Starless